Two Coastal Poems

1.
Went down deh shop dur a minute ago
Pick up me shop lunch
Bag uh Cheeto’s and me Big 8 Lime
T’ree tins uh sardines in spring water
And d’em Vienna weenies I loves
Chats up brud wit’ he’s gut hangin’
Low as he’s porch
Havin’ he’s first puff uh deh mornin’
Tells me nattuh go wakin’ no one up
An’ I says
“Sure everyone be’s up,
D’ey just ain’t come outta deh house outta it,
Hey b’y,”
And he laughs tuh kill he’self
T’rough he’s Labatt Blue breakfast
Asks where I’m from
Where I’m going to
Tells ‘em “Fredericton…”
Pauses like I got picked outta me grade four class
On who deh last Beothuk wus
After nah doin’ me readin’s,
An’ I looks up at he’s red eyes and says,
“Goin’ tuh Hermitage, Lard willin’”
Mentions d’at d’ere ferry d’at leaves Tuesday at seven
And deh feller goes right quiet sure
Like I made a racist joke er somet’in’
Looks at he’s woman er daughter er whatever missus is
Like I pronounced Topsail Road “Top-sail Road”
Nah “Top-sul” like yuh would
Right ignorant, hey b’y
Lookin’ fur jamborees d’at ain’t on deh go
And comers home d’at still be’s out west, y’knows
And USB cables where deh ports
Don’t be fur USB’s a’tall
And maybe deh scatter mummer d’at visits tents
Nah houses
And uh speed boat right perfect
Fur four hours uh choppy stuff
No problem a’tall, mah son
But I t’inks—
And d’is is ‘tween you and meself now—
I t’inks brud don’t know nudding
But I ain’t bodderin’ wit’ d’at racket
‘Cause arguin’ wit’ a Newfie
Be’s like kickin’ yer mudder’s ol’ vacuum cleaner
Yer getting yer pants dirty
And d’at’s it
Have me nacho cheeters
Now deh once
Uh right cheesy wake up, right on
D’en have me sardine can lunch
Wit’ uh bruised arse pear fur me healt’
If yuh knows what I means
And jus’ toss d’em wieners at deh gulls
Copper deh dog’s gettin’ some old
But he says hello tuh all deh b’ys all deh same
Prob’ly he’s nerves since he’s missus is gone—
I ‘llows he knows d’at pushy cliff cat
Tommy Wiggles
D’at be’s rubbin’ he’s big orange balls
All over deh breakwater
And d’at Copper t’inks d’at ain’t fit, wha
Or maybe he don’t say shit all
Cause he’s dog sitter be’s pushier d’an deh taxman
2.
Today I burnt my face,
My nose most of all,
But Jordan didn’t burn the veggie chili,
Our first and only family meal,
So we ate dysfunctional preservatives
Surviving like the Bronx children
We don’t know,
Like nasty happy mountain sun things
Popping vitamins, all drug-cool or something,
Starting fires as though we were fire starters
With illegitimate logs
And marked up Ketchup Pringles cans
Lily the Buffalo is impressed by our navigation
But not with her frequent bagging—
A meat run with plastic tusks—
Or with her playground abandonment,
Fodder for child molesters
Who overfish their teeth away
And drink brown water heart attacks
I only buy Black Horse in Newfoundland
To spite the Coors Light face
I thought I reflected
Like a lobster adorned mirror,
I only see whales in Newfoundland
Because the Saint John River blows something different,
Griff and Jordan only do their Newfie impressions
In Newfoundland,
Itching from mosquito bite pluralism,
Infected with over boiled salt beef malaria—
So far from civil servants and city hall,
Ultimate Frisbee and the Regent Mall,
I kinda like the aerial skin flock fucks,
And the white lumps that mumble
“Mind now, Stephen b’y”
From one pale toe to another
Putting on cold wet pants
Is so sexual
But the crooked rural responses
I get in them
Feel like call center diversionary tactics
Instead of good ideas about tackle or government initiatives
This is home again
And I didn’t have no clue, mah son,
This is home again
And I’m tired from the softball I played
Twelve years ago,
This is home island
But it isn’t home
Because I’m laughing a little too sincerely,
Thinking completely, concretely,
Soft as crabapple jam,
And not at all,
Morphing like every misty night’s last embers,
Autumnal in my August inhale haunting
There’s a thoughtfully nude moon
Over the diesel lung,
French immersion coughing for its life
Just beyond the incinerator,
And an interracial house of beers toasting
Our twisted diplomat guts
Vagabonds don’t write:
They beach, bleed from their eyes,
Stage torrential bean debates—
“Tomato! Maple syrup! Pork!”—
Taxi in non-taxis,
And talk over peppers and pitcher plants,
Animated by Cabot’s cod headed winds

The Poppy Factory

Lying almost directly outside of my front door is a river which leads all the way to the sea. A leaf-strewn path lined with trees and grassy verges mocks its meandering path for the full three miles. If this sounds idyllic, it is. The Water of Leith Walkway, along which I walk daily if I can help it, steels my soul if it is broken, sets it on fire if it is dull and forms one of the major reasons why I cannot now conceive of moving away. It led me to the café at which I now work, and it led me also to the poppy factory.
Unlike the other drab grey buildings in the area, the poppy factory is built from stone of a distinctive reddy-orange colour, so it would have stood out from its surroundings even were it not for the glossy vermilion flower motif above its green door, or the faded sign outside which bears the emblem 'Lady Haig Poppy Factory' and lists the hours it opens.
My curiosity was well and truly piqued from the first. The words 'poppy' and 'factory' seemed about as unlikely a pair of candidates for linguistic companionship as you could hope to find outside of a children's book, and then there was the presence of opening hours. There seemed little chance that the opening times would ever be found written up outside a pen or a biscuit factory. Opening hours equal invitation, and in this instance, wild horses would not have stopped me from attending.
Yet the sign informed that the factory shut at three thirty on weekdays, and being an evening or at least a late-afternoon walker, I was always too late by the time I reached the factory. Every time I saw it, I promised myself that on my next day off during the week I really would set off for my walk in time to make it inside. In the end, though, I never got around to it, so perhaps the wild horses had got the better of me after all, and there were no further developments on the poppy factory score until my friend came to visit Edinburgh for a long weekend. Since we had a lot of catching up to do, which is always best done mobile, we set off for a Friday afternoon jaunt. Our plan was to walk the two hours to Leith, where the river flowed into the Firth of Forth, have a pint in one of the seaside pubs and then walk back home again. Thoughts of the factory had played no part in my proposal, and it was only when I saw the glossy red poppy gleaming up ahead of us that it occurred to me we might be in time to pay it a visit. I checked the time on my phone, and it was just past three o'clock.
"Do you mind if we just have a look in here? I've been wondering for ages about this place."
My friend looked at the building and turned to me. "A poppy factory? What does that mean?"
"I don't really know. That's why we have to go in."
I felt almost nervous as we pushed open the gate and walked up the path, and definitely glad to have an accomplice. These feelings intensified when a man walked past the glass door, and, seeing our noses pressed to the glass, did a double take, opened the door and gave us an officious, "Hello?"
"I'm not really sure what we're doing here." I felt myself flushing. "We just sort of wanted to take a look."
The man opened the door and sighed, a deep sigh.
"Do you want a tour?"
He was extremely posh, the sort of posh which is rare these days. His vowels all seemed to be on the verge of cracking. My friend Rose and I looked at one another. The man sighed again and said,
"You're a little bit late for a tour. Follow me."
Meekly, or perhaps just not knowing what other course of action was open to us, we did as we were told and followed him inside a modestly shabby building which looked like some kind of club or association, and then through a set of double doors into a high-ceilinged white room. This, apparently, was the factory. It looked, in fact, much like the only other factory I had ever visited - a Japanese sausage factory. The place was riddled with desks and framed pictures but still managed to feel bare; the machinery was sparse and free-standing. The employees were invariably old. There was the air of industry, but only in decent proportions.
The aristocrat introduced us to Tam, who was to be our guide. He asked our names, which I took as a formality, but it turned out not to be. From that moment on, there was not one sentence that went uttered by Tam which was not personally addressed to one, if not both, of us. On repeated occasions he mourned the fact that we hadn't got there earlier, because some of the boys had already gone home, and we would have liked to have met them. Still, we were introduced to all of the workers who remained - all, we discovered, were veterans, with most registered disabled.
"Rose and Polly, this is Walter, Walter, this is Rose and Polly, they're having a tour," Tam would say. "Polly lives in Edinburgh. Rose is visiting for the weekend. Jim's job is to punch holes in the poppies."
We saw machines of all kinds, all delightfully specific in their functions. In that respect it was just like the factories of my pre-school imagination which I had used to spend hours drawing and constructing, and although there was no real 'line' to speak of, there was a progression, the man standing at the machine or the desk here receiving and then uniting or working further on the products of those we had just visited. We were allowed to assemble our own poppies, fitting the green stem through the hole of the red paper cut-out, and then wedging the black centre on top to secure it. Feeling like schoolgirls, we giggled with delight. The employees were just as jovial.
As we walked between the tables, or around the outside of the room which was adorned with historical pictures and portraits, Tam oscillated from fact to grainy fact. The poppy factory had come about in 1923, we were told. Until then, all the poppies for Scotland were made in London, but a suggestion made by Field Commander Haig's wife brought about the factory in Edinburgh which took her name in commemoration, and it is since them that all the poppies for Scotland, and latterly all the wreaths used at remembrance services have been made on the premises. Although admittedly larger than the tiny box of the sausage factory, the place is not large, and thus the idea that every single Scottish poppy is made here seemed hard to credit until we were led into the warehouse, used to store the Wreaths for every church, every scout, cub, brownie and guide group, and all other kinds of groups besides, as well the boxes of poppies, all of which accumulate throughout the year in the months leading up to November. The warehouse supervisor was sitting, leafing lackadaisically through a copy of The Sun. "This is Joe," said Tam. "He's a very busy man."
The tour was nearly over, but first we were conducted into a couple of meeting rooms, where we saw portraits of, amongst others, Lady Haig and Lieutanentant Colonel John McCrae, the Canadian Medical officer who penned the poem responsible for establishing the poppy as a symbol of remembrance, as well as a large framed copy of that same poem whose opening line reads,'In Flanders fields the poppies grow.'
Finally we were shown a three dimensional model of the Garden of Remembrance, set up in Scotland's main drag Princes Street around the month of November, showing the designated places of all the wreaths that were presented by different associations, but all made within the factory.
"It's a very important thing for people, to come and present their wreaths, to remember," Tam tells us. "Poppies are not just about the two World Wars. It's anybody, who has served for their country. You know, the boys in Iraq and so on."
His voice, as it had been throughout, was a seamless mixture of pragmatism and acknowledgment, the very same tone I recognised from my Grandma's speeches about the war. It was the sort of tone which made sense for those for whom war had been a reality - not just an ideological reality splashed across newspapers and pouring from mouths at pubs and parties, but an inescapable part of life. An experience which makes remembrance less of a duty not to be forgotten than an ever-present feature. It seems that to those for whom war has been part of life, it will never again be wholly outside of it.
Against that, there are the people of my generation and those close to it for whom the very phrase 'poppy factory' sounds like something from a dystopic novel, to whom this mild acceptance found in older generations causes discomfort, because we are certain that whatever war is, that it is something which we should not take lying down. Yet in the midst of our clamorous hope to eschew war from our definition of life in the future, we can stray too far into excluding it from our definition of the present, and even the past. Which is precisely why the plight of the Lady Haig factory and their ever-increasing number of tours is commendable in every way. Anything which helps to impress on youngsters the reality of recent history and the loss of past generations must be valued, and the poppy factory tour as an experience is such a surreal one, it seems it cannot fail to do so. Yet we all know, them at the poppy factory as well as us youngsters, that the remembrance we can offer will always be a lame cousin to that of those who have lived it. We can endeavour to understand, to respect the experiences and losses of others, but our mental images will always be that bit grayer, our tears that bit slower to fall. If we do feel genuinely sad, remorseful, some part of us rises up to object that we are not entitled to those feelings, and the rest of the time we have something which closely resembles guilt; guilt for not having to bear it, guilt for belonging to a nation whose international profile is one of almost unremitting perpetration. Included in our cultural heritage is the pressing awareness that remembrance can only be learned the hard way, and the cold knowledge that the alternative is scarcely more savoury.

Christmas, 2006

I slump over the last steps and draw the liqueur bottle from the top drawer, and unloading the remainder into my throat, take again to the stairs.

My father is storming around, and he stops and says

Don’t worry I’m going to stay and take care of it.

And in an instant I see that this might cut me from the ride I need across town. My aunt and uncle are waiting for him and my mother, and their children are playing Clue in the living room.

If you stay it’s only going to perpetuate the fight. You should go; it’s not worth ruining everyone’s night over.

But he is off again. Brian had found a bottle of Smirnoff in Thomas’ gym bag. Thomas plays on my father’s basketball team, and we all stood around while he issued a summary suspension across the dining room table. Thomas called Brian a faggot. Brian told Thomas he was going to be a janitor. Then Brian and I argued about whose evening plans were more important. The loser would watch the kids.

My mother stops Brian at the hall end and asks him what he was doing with someone else’s PEI drivers’ license. Why did you bring this up now, Dad and I are saying. There are red splashes on the wall through the bedroom windows and open doors, and someone yells from downstairs, there’s a fire truck in front of the house. My aunt and uncle are waiting in the driveway.

Sorry, I’m leaving, I can’t take this shit and I’m going.

If you leave I’m going to hit you in the fucking face on the way out the door.

Poetry Post 1.

(Excerpt from the Popol Vuh, translated by Z. Crow)

Are uxe' ojer tzij
waral K'iche' ub'i'.
Waral
xchiqatz'ib'aj wi
xchiqatikib'a' wi ojer tzij,
utikarib'al
uxe'nab'al puch rnojel xb'an pa
tinamit K'iche'
ramaq' K'iche' winaq.

or

This is the root of the ancient word
of this place called the Naked East.
Here
we shall write,
we shall plant the ancient word,
the origin
the beginning of all what has been done in the
Naked East
country of Naked Eastings.

--

the pencils easiest to snap
are those uncoated.
the green, metallic text tears,
the wood splinters brilliantly -
the most satisfying crack
and the book propping the paper
wears the wound.

there is no letter "t" left
on that keyboard.
after a grueling day it bust its joint,
flung free from the system
and left the alphabet short.
remaining letters took the hint
then took off, too.

now i have nothing
to write with or on.
almond eyes cranked slowly shut -
allergies acting up.
a big blue pen slaps sloppy drip
on torn bedsheets
a sorry medium.

chunky-cheeked toddlers -
relatives of mine -
ask what joy comes from ruin:
"why did the pencil crack?"
"why did the letters run?"
with a sore and a void
bloody fists are never fun

--

I recited these words
one by one
only moments ago now-
It must have been you speaking through
the moon I was staring at

and when I hit that car
or when it hit me
and sped off like I wasn't even there
I was shocked to be standing
still on my bike
like an immovable force
and I thought
Damn-

and I was glad to know
that what I'd been sensing all evening
was more than a simple inkling,
indeed a real life prediction
that I faced without hesitation
and did not waver
when it really counted.

But he came back after all
with a flat
and no side mirror,
just about speechless

--

sons of new france

found in the appalachians,
white water moored to the bend
of two birch vessels tethered by the stony autumn
the photographs are unmistakable,
the kinsman drifting in the northern air
like waifs and leaves; my heart unyielding

and I stare from the foot of the dry hills
as the tribal motorists band
the green right lanes, too many hinged on token
animal skins and shine bottles ringing on the air,
there a soft belief that greater truths
lie elsewhere in feather beds, the nimbus,
beheld in infant wonder crowning the
idols of the church adorning them

somehow the smoke rings through the piping asters
and I linger with their image in the book,
uncertain where the motors run these young men through
who waltz through the placid evenings aging
with their liberation songs
and cloud at statues in the deafening parks
where hurried placards glow with the elusive strength
that boils as they, frustrated, daily coalesce
and I strain to point my neck
watching them grapple for the unretrieved
as if to wrest, to throne and worship
the tides slipping back to the sea
and I sense that grief;
not certain where the keyhole was
they grappled for the answer in the dark,
the riddle hiding on the daylit streets and pediments
they lament, without their noble, celebrated oneness;
the broad streams sing in the gentle light of the spring,
day closes over the forgotten fields.